The objects from which the types of the different deities and sacred animals
of the Egyptian Pantheon are composed are derived from different branches of
Egyptian antiquities. The ancient Egyptians had no such collections, their
mythological representations being, as occasion required, sculptured or depicted on
the walls of temples, tombs and other edifices, or else painted or drawn on papyri,
linen, wood, and other materials. These figures are generally in profile, but
occasionally in full relief, and they consist of votive figures of metal, stone, wood,
or porcelain, many of which were deposited in the tombs, or placed on the bodies
or amidst the wraps and ornamental networks of mummies, The stone figures
are of all ages, but principally of a later period, although instances occur of figures
of deities as old as the twelfth dynasty; the small stone figures of lapis lazuli,
jasper, and other materials, come from necklaces round the necks of the mummies,
and are chiefly of the epoch of the Saite dynasty, about the seventh century b. c,
although some, as the stone frogs, are said to be found on mummies of the
eleventh dynasty. The numerous small figures in glazed fayence or Egyptian
porcelain are principally of the period of the twenty-fifth and subsequent dynasties,
the earliest known example of this employment of the material being of the age
of the twenty-fifth dynasty, a specimen in pale-green porcelain impressed with
the name of the monarch Sabaco (circa b. c. 716) having been found. Their style
of art, and the fact of their inscriptions being stamped in or impressed, not
inscribed upon them, fixes them to this age, and they do not appear to have
been continued long after. The metallic figures of the Pantheon consist of gold,